Movie Review: War of the Worlds

Reviewer: Physical Plant Himself

Movie Rating: Yes. Fucking... yes.

This was an outstanding movie. Normally I don't care for movies in which aliens invade earth. The aliens are often weak and slimy and poorly cared for, bearing all the marks of inadequate tending. They may resemble aphids, or some other form of voracious and disrespectful pest. They come to earth and get their alien asses kicked.

The bottom line is, when I watch a human movie, I want to imagine myself blasting something with a big fucking ray gun, because that’s how I get down. When it comes to kicking ass, I better have a giant motherfucking ray gun, because I have no feet. I’m a fucking plant. You can’t resemble Jet Li flying around through the air kicking people with your roots. So I’d need a ray gun or maybe a broken pool cue to really fuck shit up. As the professor would say, ass kicking is strictly a metaphor because I have no feet and definitely no motherfucking ass.

Second thing. When I watch a movie, I want to imagine myself blasting humans. You know why? Because I hate you motherfuckers. You know why I hate you motherfuckers? Because you’re patronizing. You – patronize – me. And fuck that. I want to sit here in my pot and think about blasting humans. And kittens. Specially little fucking cute black kittens that think it’s funny to fuck with my shit.

In this movie, humans didn’t kick alien ass at all – that’s why it ruled. Normally, you’ve got Dennis Quaid or Will Smith flying out of the fucking sky with some patriotic jerk-off catch phrase blowing up aliens left and right. In this movie, aliens kicked human ass. Repeatedly. With three feet and little webbed toes like a duck. And when they blast people, the people just disintegrate, as if exposed to far too much direct sun without sufficient watering.

Ok. Two more things and then I'm going to let the Professor break it down for you. When Steven Spielberg goes to design the kitchen in Tom Cruise’s house in the movie – do you think he has to find an extra small refrigerator, so as to maintain the normal human-to-refrigerator ratio? Because otherwise, you’ve got a movie about a really handsome midget running from aliens. Which would be kick ass, but sounds more like a David Lynch movie than a Steven Spielberg movie. And where would the prop-human get such a refrigerator? My guess is Russia or Korea or some other dark land without healing sunlight or adequately nutritious soil, where humans fight over scraps of rotting meat so they can put it in their tiny refrigerators.

Last thing. Even for a household plant such as myself, it helps to have a black guy with a deep voice explain the most profound mysteries of existence. That’s why I liked the Morgan Freeman voiceovers in the movie, where he explains that microbes killed the aliens. When it comes to selecting the right bank for my investments, I might trust an old white guy who plays lawyers and cops on TV, but for the really heavy subjects such as the right life insurance plan, inexpensive long distance, and the motherfucking tragic lives of those Emperor penguins, it’s got to be a black guy with a deep voice.

Ok. That’s it. To my human readers, fuck you. To any kittens out there fuck you too. Judgement day is coming bitches. To everybody else, keep the faith.

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Reviewer: The Professor

Movie Review Rating: Sociopathic. Odd.

At first glance, Physical Plant's "movie review" seems to be less a piece of cinematic criticism than a barely indecipherable diatribe produced by a deeply troubled personality. My angry little friend has homocidal and, indeed, genocidal sentiments that pose an intractable interference with his critical objectivity when it comes to reviewing movies. Nevertheless, rays of insight penetrate the dense cloud of ideologically loaded ejaculations that emanate from his furiously transpiring orifices.

For example: the refrigerator question. Physical Plant raises a valid point of inquiry: where does Steven Spielberg manage to procure an adequately diminutive refrigerator, so as not to draw undue attention to the lilliputian stature of his protagonist? Russia and Korea are possibilities, but average refrigerator size has increased drastically in recent decades, so there is also the possibility that this is simply a particularly old refrigerator.

A google search will occasionally provide you with a list of scholarly articles that will provide more information the subject that you are interested in. Searching for "refrigerator size increased over time" will lead you to articles on "the wetting behavior of instantized cocoa beverage powders" and "estimating organ size in migrating shorebirds."

Tom Cruise looks quite a lot like a migrating shorebird - not a long-legged wader so much as a small, beach dwelling insect-eater. If I had to estimate the size of his organs, I'd guess that they are fairly small. There's no shame in this - evolution will contain organ size in Tom Cruise so as to make it easier for him to flit quickly about from place to place and catch tasty bugs.

In War of the Worlds, however, Tom Cruise doesn't catch the bugs, the bugs catch him. As Physical Plant aptly pointed out, this separates the film from the usual sci fi formula, in which "blasting aliens" is merely a reification and an extension of our historical conquest over nature: having so thoroughly conquered earthbound flora and fauna, we must imagine extraterrestrial lifeforms to dominate, and the fictitious blasting of aliens becomes merely the repetitive and banal intergalactic equivalent of bludgeoning a baby seal with an aluminum baseball bat.

In contrast, War of the Worlds presents a small story masquerading as a larger one: since Tom Cruise's tiny organs cannot compete with the massive thick-headed tripods of the alien conquerors, earth-saving heroics are out of the question, and the only option left is to run. In the process, he finally becomes a mature adult and reaches a more more modest and attainable objective than saving human kind: saving the life of his nine-year-old daughter.